The Nintendo 3DS continues to shine as one of Nintendo's brightest spots and Mario Kart 8's stellar sales are helping the game maker bridge the gap between the Wii U's spread-out selection of first-party titles.
Reports on the successes of the carting game and 3DS handheld gaming system titles have given Nintendo's stock a needed bump.
To the delight of investors, Nintendo reported that Mario Kart 8 has exceeded 2.82 million in global sales and moved more than a million copies of the carting game in the U.S. The gaming company also said nine 3DS games have surpassed 1 million in sales.
Mario Kart 7 sold 3.48 million copies; Super Mario 3D Land, 3.09 million; New Super Mario Bros. 2, 2.28 million; Pokémon X, 2.10 million; Pokémon Y, 2.01 million; The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D, 1.39 million; Animal Crossing: New Leaf, 1.36 million; Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, 1.33 million; and The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, 1.09 million, according to Nintedo's U.S. sales figures.
Nintendo's shares were said to have risen by approximately 4 percent after the company reported the success of Mario Kart 8 and its 3DS software. It was the biggest upswing the company has enjoyed in four months.
Nintendo also sparked optimism among its investors when the game maker revealed that Pokémon: Trading Card Game Online was heading to Apple's iPad sometime before the end of 2014. While the trading card game has already been released on PC, it's arrival on mobile devices may have given investors a glimmer of hope that the gaming company was gauging interest in bringing its games to mobile devices.
Back in January, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata said the company felt it would lose more than it would gain by bringing its intellectual properties to mobile devices.
"Many people say that releasing Nintendo's software assets for smart devices would expand our business," Iwata said. "However, we believe that we cannot show our strength as an integrated hardware-software business in this field, and therefore it would difficult to continue the same scale of business in the medium- to long-term."
If investors were heralding the arrival of a Nintendo game on iPads as a harbinger of a stream of more mobile content, they shouldn't get too excited, according to Amir Anvarzadeh, a manager of Japanese equity sales at BGC Partners Inc. in Singapore.
"We have been here many times before in regards to Nintendo's tentative plans to introduce some of its characters for smart devices," said Anvarzadeh. "This latest Pokémon cards plan, which is already out on PCs, is hardly a change in its direction."
